2. Pardons & Paroles responds.

The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has sent its response to Gov. Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall for how it is going to correct issues with early paroles and errant victim family notifications.

Back in October, Ivey put a 75-day moratorium on early paroles, changed the Board’s leadership, and ordered a plan of corrective action.

Ivey and Marshall were dissatisfied with the Board’s first draft, saying it had “too many unanswered questions.”

The new, updated plan proposes revising how early parole candidates are reviewed and hiring a consultant to see what changes need to be made within the organization.

They aren’t removing anybody from their jobs, but that’s one of the things a consultant can recommend. Kind of like the Bobs in Office Space.

And you can read the corrective action plan in its entirety at Alabama Daily News HERE.

3. The big fight for 2019?

A legislative debate 25 years in the making is coming to a State House near you in 2019.

Alabama’s struggle to properly fund infrastructure maintenance and construction has been well-known for some time.

But solutions have been elusive – like raising the gas tax for the first time since 1992 and indexing it to correspond with growth.

It’s a complicated issue that only gets more so when you add in the various political elements at play: a generally conservative and tax-averse legislature, lots of new lawmakers coming to Montgomery, urban-rural or city-county splits.

The best way to attract new businesses and people to our state is through ensuring a quality public education system, he argues.

Just take for example what the University of Alabama did with expanding its student population and attracting enrollees from all over.

Here’s an excerpt:

“A robust, quality public school system will do far more to attract economic – and therefore population – growth in the next few decades. Individual families may be able to navigate circumstances by finding quality private schools or opting to home school, but families and, more importantly, companies will be swayed by knowing that the school districts and feeder patterns in any given area are producing quality students across the board. Companies will know that the state is producing quality workers, and families can take comfort knowing their children and their children’s friends will be educated in systems that take great pride in quality outcomes for their students.”

5. News Briefs.

Another inmate killed

24-year-old Terrance Andrews was killed Saturday at St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville.

DOC says Andrews was found unresponsive and with multiple stab wounds after a fight inside a prison housing area.

The prison system identified a suspect in Andrews’ death and said he will be charged with murder. That man is serving a life sentence for a 2006 murder conviction in Baldwin County.

Andrews was serving a 25-year sentence on a 2013 first-degree robbery in Mobile County.

Nine inmates have been fatally stabbed in state prisons since January.

Endangered fish

Federal officials are putting a fish whose habitat is threatened by development in southern states on the endangered species list.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is adding the Trispot Darter fish to the list.

The Trispot Darter can be found in the Coosa River watershed in northern Alabama, northern Georgia and southeastern Tennessee. It also survives in the Conasauga River watershed, above the confluence with the Coosawattee River in Georgia and Tennessee, according to the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity.

Being placed on the endangered species list makes it illegal for the freshwater fish to be caught or sold.

It can also complicate commercial development in areas near known habitats.

Obamacare legal fights

It also clears the way for appeals that could eventually give the Supreme Court another shot at deciding the law’s constitutionality.

In any case, nobody is going to lose coverage while the legal fight continues.

Trump to slow Syria pullout?

After meeting with President Trump, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the president has ordered a slowdown to the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Syria.

“I think we’re in a pause situation,” Graham said outside the White House.

Trump announced earlier this month that he was ordering the withdrawal of all the roughly 2,000 troops from war-torn Syria, with aides expecting it to take place swiftly. The president had declared victory over the Islamic State group in Syria, though pockets of fighting remain.

Graham had been an outspoken critic of Trump’s decision, which had drawn bipartisan criticism and led to the resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

The announcement also had shocked American allies, including Kurds who have fought alongside the U.S. against the Islamic State group and face an expected assault by Turkey.

“I think we’re slowing things down in a smart way,” Graham said, adding that Trump was very aware of the plight of the Kurds.